


Half What You See

by pibroch (littleblackdog)



Series: Oakenshield Press [3]
Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Gossip, Humor, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-28
Updated: 2013-01-28
Packaged: 2017-11-27 08:38:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/659985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleblackdog/pseuds/pibroch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Blaine Fundin had a conversation about William Baggins, and one time he actually spoke to the man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Four Days

**Author's Note:**

> You can blame this story on my undying love for the canon friendship between Bilbo and Balin, and how flawlessly Ken Stott is bringing him to life.
> 
> Chapter titles will refer to how long it's been since Tom and Bill met in Bran' New Suit, and time will skip about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oakenshield fact #1: Deryn owns a terrier mix (actually a yorkie-poo) named Harley, who often spends her days napping in his office.

Just barely resisting the urge to haul off and boot Tom’s office door as it clicked firmly shut, Deryn rubbed one hand over his face, dragging hard. A bloody potted plant could have put all the evidence together and figured out _they’re shagging_ : the snickering phone call from the lads on Saturday, the mark he’d just seen on Tom’s neck, and more than anything, the matching shit-eating smiles between Tom and the wee Baggins fella’.

“Bollocks,” he said under his breath, then glanced over to find Oliver staring goggle-eyed at Tom’s door, all but forgetting the tea cradled in his spindly, stained hands. “Ollie, damn it, don’t you spill that."

“I— sorry? Oh!” There was fumbling, a bit of a wet patch on the hardwood, and Deryn left the lad to clean it up, stalking away to find some fucking answers instead. Blaine’s door was wide open, and the man himself was hunched in front of his computer, sipping his own tea as his eyes darted over the screen.

Deryn stepped inside the office without knocking, and Blaine didn’t bother looking away from the screen before speaking, absently adjusting his dark-rimmed reading glasses. “It’s only ten past seven on a Monday morning, brother. I’m good, but I’ve not yet perfected time-travel.”

“This isn’t about the Delisle portfolio.” Although getting that pinned down as quickly as possible was something of a priority as well; small as they were, they needed to take good care of their authors to keep them. Deryn didn’t bother sitting, just pushed Blaine’s guest chair aside and leaned both fists against the neatly kept but crowded desktop. “Did you know Tom was bringing William Baggins in here today?” 

As livid as it might have made him if he’d been the only one kept in the dark, Deryn actually considered Blaine’s shocked sputter to be a worse reaction.

“ _What_?” Setting his cup down with a clatter and snatching a tissue to sop up the tea that had ended up in his beard, Blaine sat back in his chair, levelling Deryn with his full attention now. His glasses came off, folded into his hand, and his eyes were sharp as razors. “Are you certain? When?”

“Aye, I’d say fairly certain.” Deryn jerked one thumb back towards the door. “He’s here now, in with Tom.”

“Great god almighty— what in the _hell_ is he doing?” Moving faster than one might have guessed from the white in his hair and stodgy exterior (another damned cardigan today, as beige and thick as oatmeal, layered over a dark red shirt and striped tie), Blaine was on his feet in an instant.

Then he paused, one hand resting lightly on the desk, and stared so hard Deryn could feel it in the back of his skull. It was a severely probing look Blaine had stolen from their mother, rest her soul, and it never failed to get Deryn’s hackles up.

“You’re not telling me everything,” Blaine said after a moment of silence, and Deryn just barely managed not to twitch. Shagging an author, shagging _that_ author, might not have been the best decision Tom had ever made, but Deryn didn’t have any intention of yapping about it, not even to his brother.

Straightening up to full height, Deryn squared his jaw. He wasn’t some stripling, and Blaine wasn’t Ma, even if he did harp on like an old woman. “What?”

“Tell me, brother.”

“I’ll tell you to piss off.” If Blaine wanted more information, he could fetch it himself. “Then I’ll tell you I’m going back to work. I’ve a pile of manuscripts taller than Ollie to see to, and no time to deal with this Baggins shite. This is me, passing the ball to Acquisitions." 

Waving vaguely at his brother, Deryn beat a purposeful retreat. Weathering Blaine’s frown was much easier to swallow than telling tales about Tom.

Business was business, sure, but they’d been mates forever and a day— it would take more than a few unprofessional gaffes to trounce that. And if Tom was going to start a midlife crisis by dipping his dick into the honey pot, getting off with an author of all the damned things, Deryn would still have his back. They’d been through stupider shite together, after all.

And it couldn’t be all bad if it managed to banish the shadows from around Tom’s eyes, if only for a little while.

“Go hide then, you cowardly arse,” Blaine was calling after him, and Deryn made a point of reaching an arm back into his brother’s office, just long enough to flip him the tongs, before legging it.


	2. Three Months

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oakenshield fact #2: the staff all have "family" supper together at the office at least once a week.

It was a blustery afternoon of bitter drizzle, too windy for umbrellas, and a bite of chill had settled in his bones before Blaine made it back to the office. Hunkered down deep into the collar of his coat, he grumbled under his breath as an especially fat droplet of water dripped from the lintel of the Oakenshield door and snuck down his neck just as he was finally stepping inside.

Wiping his feet and doffing his sodden bunnet, all Blaine wanted was a cup of tea, a pair of dry socks, and a half hour to sit at his desk and ignore emails.

Nodding at Donald, who kept the phone cradled against his shoulder even as he passed Blaine a short stack of pink messages as he passed, Blaine squished his way down the corridor, every step reminding him of the perfectly serviceable galoshes he had forgotten at home that morning, and the sad, waterlogged state of his brogues.

The decision of which to do first— either slip into his office and peel out of his coat, or put the kettle on— might have been more challenging if not for the state of his office door (open, when he had left it shut), and the familiar laughter ringing out from inside.

Rolling his eyes heavenward for a brief, fortifying moment, Blaine made an effort to shake off the worst of his sour mood and trudged over to his door, dropping his briefcase with a thud as he stepped inside.

“Afternoon, lads,” he said, only allowing a smidgen of wariness to colour his tone. He dearly loved these boys, these young men, but as a pair they had a tendency to draw in nuisances like a lodestone drew nails. 

Filip was standing, his back to the door, sliding bits of magnetic poetry around on Blaine's filing cabinet, while Kalle was spinning lazily in the guest desk chair, twisting a ruined paperclip between his fingers. The two of them were dressed in ratty jeans and dark hooded sweatshirts, looking— to Blaine's current ill-humour, at least— rather unfortunately like ASBOs taken human form.

“Hullo!” Setting his impromptu paperclip sculpture on the desk (which would go in the drawer with the others once the lads left, rather than in the bin, because Blaine had accepted long ago that he was a soppy old sod), Kalle twiddled a wave, rocking back in the chair and making the joints shriek. That long-suffering chair had survived much worse punishment at the hands and wriggly arses of years of young Durins, however; Blaine wasn't especially concerned.

Stripping out of his coat, hanging it and his cap on the back of the door, Blaine glanced briefly at his watch before bending to fight with tight, wet shoelaces. “You two are a bit early for supper, not that I don't enjoy a surprise invasion now and again.”

“We needed to ask you something important,” Kalle said, and Filip turned from his intent (and likely mildly vulgar) wordsmithing just long enough to add: “Before the hoards descend for supper.”

Kalle paused, head tilting rather like a puppy reacting to a high-pitched noise. “Is it Thai or Indian tonight, by the way?” 

“Ollie's choice, this evening.” Finally peeling off his clammy socks, Blaine slipped his bare feet into the quilted slippers he kept on hand for situations just like this, sighing deeply as his mood took a distinct jump. “And I've no doubt he'll be wanting his chicken madras. Now, I am harbouring some doubts that tonight's takeout is your _something important._ ”

“Supper is incredibly important,” Kalle insisted, while Filip stepped away from his poetry with a flourish, making room for Blaine to move past him and around to the other side of the desk. Blaine caught sight of _straining pink mountains_ among the scatter of tiny white magnets, and didn't bother looking further, claiming his chair instead.

“But _no_ ,” Filip said, shooting his brother a brief, sideways glare. “That's not it. We wanted to ask, what's that thing called when you smash two words together to get another word?”

“Like spork,” Kalle offered, when Blaine simply stared at the pair of them, baffled. “Or guyliner.”

“Or bromance.” 

“Sexting.”

“Tofurkey.”

“Bootylicious.”

“ _Stop,_ for God's sake.” Pressing fingertips against his temples, Blaine took a moment to assure himself that the evolution of language was a natural progression, a _good_ _thing_ ; he may have also felt a twinge of sympathy for his brother, combing through manuscripts from young up-and-comers, likely written on buggering iPhones. “Do... do you mean _portmanteau_? Like brunch, or Chunnel?”

The clap of Filip's hands together wasn't entirely expected, but Blaine managed not to jump. “Yes, exactly! Portmanteau. Oh, that does sound fancy.”

“You're better than Google,” Kalle said with a beaming grin, and damn it all, Blaine felt equal parts warmed by the bizarre compliment, and utterly _ancient_. “We're trying to think up one for Tom and Bill.”

Blaine blinked, glancing between the lads. This was all becoming a bit like watching a foreign film with blurry subtitles. “You're what? Why on earth?”

“Because we really like Bill,” said Kalle, as if it were entirely obvious.

Filip shrugged. “And they're just sickeningly _adorable_ , so they need an equally cute and embarrassing name to torture them like they torture us. Like Brangelina, or TomKat. _”_

“But their names are too short,” Kalle continued. “Till? Bom? Doesn't work.” 

“I dearly wish this seemed madder than it does,” Blaine said absently, drumming his fingers against his skull. “But you two have already set such an astonishingly high bar in that regard. I cannot even...” _Oh, sod it_. “How about... how about Billton? Or Thorill?”

“Hey, those aren't bad—” Filip began to say, but broke off with a yelp when Kalle slapped his palm against the desktop, popping up excitedly from his lounge on the chair. 

“ _Throbbing_! Throb, Thor... wait, no, that's no good—”

“And on that note,” Blaine said, loudly. “I think it's best I leave you lads to it, informative though this has been. Off with you— go loiter around someone else until feeding time _._ ” Knowing better than to argue with Blaine's _work tone_ , neither young man wasted time moving towards the door.

“Oh, and lads?” Stopping in the doorway, both Filip and Kalle looked leerily back at him. Blaine folded his hands on the desk, calling up a placid smile. “If you do trot out some Frankenstein's monster of a moniker within your uncle's hearing, I do trust you'll keep my involvement, minor as it was, entirely to yourselves. Unless you'd like him to know all about that lovely, statuesque lass from the gym—” Filip, leaning against the doorframe, flinched visibly. “Or our dear Oliver's mysterious new suitor.” Kalle's eyes went wide as saucers, overtaking his face.

“How—”

“What—”

Blaine's smile simply widened. “Better than Google, remember? Off you pop, now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more to come soon-ish, with any luck at all.


End file.
